


missed connections

by spock



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Kink Meme, M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-08
Updated: 2012-03-07
Packaged: 2017-11-01 15:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/pseuds/spock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Craigslist is pretty useless once the zombie uprising happens, but before then? Well, it gets the job done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 30 Minutes or Less

**Author's Note:**

> fill for the prompt:
>
>>   
> _The first 5 times Daryl and Glenn almost met before ZA and the one time ..._  
> 
> 
> Unbeta'd, so feel free to point out mistakes. I'll be tweaking this for about a week until I'm finally content with it. 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > _To the pizza guy who delivered a pizza to me and my brother's place last night at 2AM: sorry, but he's a douchebag, what can you do?_

Glenn hadn't even known they delivered this far out from the city, but he was working the fourth shift at a low-rate 24 hour pizza place and his boss was the cheapest asshole on this side of the Mississippi, so he wasn't really all that shocked.   
  
He slammed the door of his shitty Honda and pulled his hat down lower on his face. The only light for miles came from the the porch, which was flickering and had to be the lowest wattage known to man, and if Glenn even so much as   _thought_   he heard banjos, he was turning right the fuck around, job or no job.  
  
He tripped trying to navigate the steps in the low light while attempting to balance the pizza box, almost dropped the damn thing, which would have been par for course with the luck in his life this far. He caught himself and jogged his way up the other two steps, walking onto the landing and pulling open the screen to bang on the door. "Pizza!"  
  
After a few seconds of thumping around inside the door was yanked open, Glenn momentarily blinded from the sudden excess of light coming from inside the house. The guy who answered the door was fucking   _huge_   and had a shaved head, looking like he'd just walked off the set of  _American History X_  . He stared at Glenn hard and sneered out, "Well you sure as shit ain't Italian." Then he turned to yell back into the house, "Daryl, I thought I told your bitch ass to order pizza, not fucking Chinese."  
  
Glenn didn't get payed enough to put up with this shit. He ground his teeth and muttered out, "Funny, because you don't look like a comedian," but when the guy turned his crazed, slightly unfocused eyes back in Glenn's direction to ask what the   _fuck_   he was mumbling about Glenn didn't bother to repeat himself. He wasn't suicidal.  
  
The guy grunted and threw a bunch of bills in Glenn's general direction, a couple of them falling down onto the porch floor as Glenn was left scrambling to catch them before snatching the pizza out from Glenn's hands, tossing out a, "Don't take so long next time, Charlie," before slamming the door in Glenn's face.   
  
When Glenn finally managed to find all of the cash and had it all counted, he noticed it was a dollar short, never mind not even having a tip factored in.  
  
Fucking prick. 


	2. Go For the Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > _We met at the gym today and I was kind of staring at you and then you noticed stared back for a long time. When I accidentally dropped my iPod you came back into the locker room to give it back to me, but walked away before I could say thanks. So. Thanks._

Daryl goes to the gym a couple times a month. Most months it really is a couple in the literal sense, but whenever Merle's out on bail and around the house more than usual Daryl gets as much use out of that membership as possible. 

He's always been wiry, never managing to achieve the bulk that's always come easy to his brother. Any work he manages to get is of the manuel labor variety, so it's not like he goes to the gym for health reasons, but it gets him out from under his brothers juding eyes, so it's worth the obnoxious monthly fee to keep a membership at a place his brother would never even dream of going to.

Merle's back on meth again, as if it was ever off it, making him more insufferable than usual, so by Wednesday he's  _grateful_ to take the drive into the city, when Daryl pulls into the gym's parking lot he let's out a sigh of relief.

He's already wearing his work out clothes, a baggy pair of mesh shorts and an old t-shirt. He's never liked being naked around other people, around strangers, not even back in high school. Merle says that he's a fag because of it, but he's also the guy who's typical Monday night is running around the forest buck naked, tweaking like mad, so who gives a fuck what he says anyway. 

Daryl walks in and ignores the nod the guy working the front desk shoots in his direction, flashing his membership card and making a b-line over to the treadmills. He finds one open that's far enough away from the only other person using them and sets it up, popping headphones into his ears even though he didn't own an mp3 player. He'd learned early on that people think you're open to chatting if you didn't have a damn pair of the things jammed into your ears at all times, no matter how unsociable and surly you looked. 

He'd ran four miles when he felt the tell-tale eerie feeling of someone starting at him creep up his spine. Daryl looked up and saw a young guy over on a stationary bike staring his way, so Daryl stared back. When the other guy finally broke eye contact Daryl looked down to see how far he'd run during their little staring contest;  _Twelve miles, jesus_.

Reaching up to swipe the sweat from his forehead, Daryl chanced a glance back over towards the bikes and saw that the other guy was gone. Huh. His eyes zeroed in on something shining from the floor. It was one of those iPod things. 

Odds are that it belongs to Daryl's staring partner, so he turned off his tradmill and made his way over towards the stationary bikes to picked it up, looking around for the guy. He sighed miserably when the other guy was nowhere to be found. Daryl figured he'll just have to suck it up, and started for the back of the gym to find the men's locker room. This is what he gets for trying to be a good samaritan, seriously.

He opened the door and scrunched his nose at chemical-clean smell. Daryl looked down a few rows of lockers before he finds the guy. He'd been nearly naked, wearing nothing but a jock and even that he was about to slide down his pale thighs. Daryl coughed as loudly as he could manage, his throat closing up as it was, letting the other guy know he was there. Talk about awkward.

The other man's head jerked up, turning to look in Daryl's direction. He blushed when he saw it was Daryl standing there. "O-oh, hey!"

"You dropped this," Daryl thrust his arm out, pushing the iPod into the other mans chest and then yanking it back as soon as the his hand came up to grab at the mp3 player, their hands touching briefly in the exchange. It wasn't hard to for Daryl to keep his eyes locked onto the other guys', it wasn't as if there was anywhere else for him to look without seeming like a perv.  _This_  was exactly the reason why Daryl hated being naked around other people. Or seeing other people naked.

He turned around and bolted from the locker room like a bat out of hell, deciding to go to the weight room to work out some of his tension. He still had a couple of hours to blow off before Merle would crash from his high.


	3. 867-5309

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > _I dialed the wrong number and we had that seven second, "I think you have the wrong number" conversation and then we breathed at each other for three minutes and twenty four seconds. I'm not exaggerating. Call-logs don't lie._

"Hello?"

"Yeah, hey, is Marc there?"

"I think you got the wrong number."

"Oh, my bad. Sorry."

"No problem." The dudes voice on the other end of the line doesn't say anything else, so for a second there Daryl just assumes that he must have hung up. It's not like there's anything to say at this point anyway, besides maybe checking to see if he'd miss-dialed or if the number he'd had was just plain wrong, but Daryl can still hear him breathing.

So. The guy's just breathing at him now, and for some reason Daryl can't bring himself to hang up. What if this is some stupid  _Cellular_ -type situation and by hanging up he's semi-responsible for the guys death. 

Eventually he caves, because there's only just so much awkward breath-filled silence a grown man can take. Next they're going to play the,  _No,_  you _hang up_  game. "So."

"--what? Oh! Sorry, man, I--Sorry. Um, thanks." Then he hangs up. Daryl shrugs to himself before dropping the phone into the cradle and turning back to the tv.  



	4. Out of Stock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > To the guy in the raggedy baseball cap who bought the last pack of Lucky Strikes from the Publix off Howell: fuck you.

"I'm sorry sir, but I just sold the last pack to the gentleman before you. Was there anything else I could get for you today?"


	5. 10 Items or Less

Normally Glenn isn't one to fall for the mass-media survivalist scare tactics. When Y2K was supposed to go down he hadn't so much as bought an extra pack of batteries the week before, and he'd even been dicking around on his computer when the clock struck midnight like the rebel he was.

It wasn't that he was a cynic or anything, but he knew that a big part of the news' shtick was keeping people complacent about some things and scared to death of others, so that they'd keep watching though the commercials and hear the full story at eleven and, hey, if they saw something they wanted to buy from those fine sponsors while they we're hyped up on adrenaline from the latest headliner, who were they to stop them?

But this time the news seemed to be trying really hard to play  _down_  whatever it was that had the National Guard actually getting off their asses and roaming the streets, so Glenn's kinda worried for once. Not enough to buy Costco sized rolls of toilet paper or any shit like that, but he is stopping to pick up some candles, batteries, and probably a case of bottled water before he heads into work.

The cute guy manning the counter nearest the front of the door smiled at Glenn when he walked inside and that was enough of a distraction for him to completely forget to grab a cart. It'd be too embarrassing for him to backtrack and get one now, so he goes without.

He's regretting the decision by the time he's looped back to the front of the store, having lugged around a twenty-four pack of off-brand water all over the fucking store looking for candles. He gets a small reprieve when the cute cashier rings him up but he just can't seem to let himself lose face by asking the guy to help him carry it out to his car just because he was too stupid to get a cart. It's not like he didn't park that far from the entrance anyway. 

It's when he reaches the exit of the store that he really realizes the error of his ways. The place doesn't have an automated door and Glenn's got his both hands full with the water, balancing the bag of batteries and candles on top, but luckily before he really has to figure out the logistics a guy opens the door from the outside, holding it open when he notices that Glenn's hands are full.

Glenn hurries though, not wanting to hold the guy up. "Thanks, man, you're a life saver." 

"No problem," the man mutters out, and Glenn knows that voice from somewhere. He turns around and it's not even a second before he realizes it's the the hot scruffy guy from the gym a few months ago. 

Glenn really wants to say something, he doesn't even know what, but a lady and her kid come shoving past him, stomping though the door the gym-guy is still holding open. Glenn's arms are killing him and hunting for those candles took longer than he expected, plus he really needs to hurry the hell up or he'll be late for the start of his shift. 

Hot-scruffy-gym-guy nods at him before turning to walk into the store, so Glenn figures that maybe the guy didn't recognize him anyway. 

>   
> Aug 16 - You're quiet and polite but really don't look it - m4m - 20 (Atlanta)
> 
> _I'm sure you're not the type to check this stuff, but I thought I'd give it a shot._
> 
> _I ran into you at a store today and you held the door open for me because my hands were full. We actually met before a couple months ago at the gym when you gave my back my dropped iPod. I left a thank you message for you on here back then, but I don't expect you to have seen it._
> 
> _To prove that it's you, reply back with the name of the store we ran into each other today._


	6. 1 out of every 5 relationships begin online.

The only time Daryl goes to the stupid  _Missed Connections_  board on Craigslist is to make himself feel better about his own lot in life and to sometimes rage about the idiots he meets on a day to day basis.  
  
But.  
  
Well, earlier today he ran into the guy he had a staring contest with at the gym all those months ago, and it looked like he might have recognized Daryl, too. Before either of them had a chance to say anything some woman and her bratty kid stole the moment and Daryl hadn't wanted to wait around to see if all that ended up happening was a second round of their contest.   
  
But, still. Maybe... Well, it never hurts to look.  
  
Sure enough there's a couple new threads from today that sound like they could have been from the guy. Male for male, early 20s, in Atlanta. The third one turns out to be from the man, or, at least Daryl's pretty damn sure it is, and he can hardly believe his luck.  
  
He clicks on the reply button and proves he's human to get a special e-mail address to reply back to. He sends off an e-mail before he has a chance to chicken out; nothing special, just the name of the store to prove his identity and his real name and e-mail address. He clicks send and hauls ass out of the house to run around their property for a couple of hours so he won't just obsessively refresh his inbox waiting for a reply like the pathetic sap he apparently is.   
  
Daryl only manages to run for a little over an hour before he talks himself into heading back to the house. It's because he's thirsty, honestly, but he figures he might as well stop by the desktop before he heads all the way back into the kitchen.  
  
There's one new message in his inbox and Daryl feels like a loser for the way that his breathing speeds up when he sees it there. He reads it and learns that the other guy's name is Glenn. Glenn, who wants to know if Daryl would like to get coffee with him tomorrow.  
  
That's the gist of what he says, anyway. What he actually sent had been four rambling paragraphs that had said something to that effect. Reading it makes Daryl feel better about the way he was a such a spazz not two hours earlier, because Glenn is way, way worse. He types back,  _Sure_ and suggests a decent place in downtown Atlanta for them to go to and clicks send.  
  
The next morning there's a nationwide news broadcast from the President alerting the public that recently dead seem to have become reanimated and that you may see them walking down Main Street. Just a heads up. They never do get to have that coffee date.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Turns out that isn't the end of their story.   
  
He and Merle run into a group of survivors a few months after they abandon the city, and what are the odds that Glenn just so happens to be with them? Merle breaks off to harass the women and all the other members of the group hover close to make sure Merle doesn't cause trouble. Normally Daryl would be their running damage control, but his normally doesn't include Glenn, so he gives himself some time to see if he can change that.   
  
They stare at each other, which actually  _is_ pretty normal for them, but Glenn is the one to break the silence this time, which isn't. "We never did get to have that coffee, huh?"  
  
Daryl can't help the way his mouth twitches, because Glenn has a smart ass mouth and he's enough of an asshole to be into that, apparently. "Shame." The world's gone to shit and humanity as they've known it is fucked, but hell, there's enough time for them to stay still and have a proper meeting. Coffee's more than likely out of the question because now-a-days clean water is a luxury, but Daryl actually has some of that and he doesn't mind sharing as long as it's only with Glenn, so they can probably make do, given the circumstances.  
  
He talks Merle into setting up camp for the night, Glenn's group willing to put up with Merle's bullshit after Daryl offers to share the rabbits they caught earlier in the day, ignoring his brothers protests. He and Glenn don't get to talk much, not with all these people around. Glenn's eating like he's been starved for protein for days, which doesn't help the conversation issue either. When they finally start breaking off to assign watch/sleep shifts for the night, Glenn slips him a piece of paper that Daryl can't figure out when in the hell he had the time to write. It reads:

> **As far as I'm concerned there's probably only 10 guys left in the whole world**  
>  _so odds are you're the guy I've been looking for._

So it's become glaringly obvious that Glenn's a virgin who probably hadn't of been able to get a date even back when the worlds population had been in the billions. But Daryl figures that it's okay, because the same's true for him, so it'll all probably work out in the end.

As long as the fucking geeks don't get them first. 

(They don't.)


End file.
